


I Met You In the Dark

by ungoodpirate



Series: Say You Won't Let Go [2]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Adam's POV, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Developing Relationship, M/M, Non-Chronological, Thanksgiving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2019-03-01 07:18:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13289832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ungoodpirate/pseuds/ungoodpirate
Summary: “Come home with me,” Ronan said.Adam turned to look. The side of Ronan’s face was smushed into the pillow in a way that was sort of adorable, too soft for his hard exterior. Adam stuttered out: “What?”Ronan shrugged the shoulder not pressed into the mattress. “It’s not a big deal,” Ronan said, although Adam definitely disagreed. “Think of it as… me opening my heart to fucking pathetic loser who has nowhere to go for Thanksgiving.”Adam threw his pen at him.--The 2nd part of my non-magic, alternative first meeting, they met in college, pynch series... in which Adam goes home with his boyfriend for Thanksgiving even though they haven't been dating that long and people have emotional damage to deal with but come out on the other side stronger.





	I Met You In the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Note 1 - As stated in the summary, this is a 2nd part/sequel. If you don't want to go back and read the first part, you just need to know Adam and Ronan are college juniors, they just met at the beginning of this academic year. The first part is about the night they met. Also, all of this was somehow shamelessly inspired from the song 'Say You Won't Let Go.'
> 
> Note 2 - The 'Now' sections are in chronological order. The 'Before' sections are in reverse-chronological order.

**Now**

 

“It’s not too late. We can turn back,” Ronan said from behind the steering wheel as he curved his BMW off the main road and onto a narrow side street that would more accurately be described as a pathway. 

 

“You invited me,” Adam said. “You said, I believe, it was ‘fucking pathetic’ that I was staying at school over mid term break.”

 

“The fact that you call it mid term break instead of Thanksgiving break is the fucking pathetic part,” Ronan muttered in reply. 

 

Adam ran his thumb under the seat belt. After the hours-long drive, it was beginning to cut into his neck. “Don’t be an asshole,” he said.

 

Ronan went quiet. It might’ve been contrition. 

 

Adam supposed it must of been stressful to return home again. He understood, from other people, that is a struggle steeped in strange and conflicting emotions. Adam remembered the dread of returning to his home after every day of school as a child, but he didn’t think that was exactly the same. 

 

They arrived at the end of lane, the car’s tires crunking over gravel. The trees cleared to reveal a big farmhouse in the middle of large plot with barns of various colors dotted around further away down the lawn. 

 

“This is fucking it,” Ronan said. Although Adam had known from being told that Ronan had grown up rural, on a farm, seeing it wasn’t exactly believing it. It was hard to imagine that this place -- homey and storybook -- was the place that had formed and shaped Ronan Lynch. He gave off the illusion of being raised by something harder than this. 

 

They hauled their bags out of the trunk and went up the porch and inside. Ronan dropped his duffle on the floor of the entrance way and Adam, although it bothered him, followed suit. From where they stood, Adam could hear the sounds of a kitchen at work: a clanging pan, the running of a sink, and the slam shut of a cabinet door. 

 

“This way,” Ronan said. When they emerged in the spacious, country-style kitchen, the source of the noise was discovered: a woman, blue dress, and blonde hair reaching past her shoulder blades. 

 

Ronan halted stiffly in the doorway. 

 

She turned around at their footsteps. “Hey, you made!” She was young, but Ronan didn’t have any sisters that Adam had ever heard of. 

 

Ronan cleared his throat. He said to Adam, “This is whatever blonde Declan dating this season,” with a wave in the girl’s direction. 

 

“Ronan, you jerk,” the girl said, giving him a solid wack in the arm. “Declan and I have been dating for five years.” She stuck her hand out in Adam’s direction. “I’m Ashley.” 

 

“Adam,” he said back. 

 

“A-names for the win, right?” she said cheery and a little valley-girl-esque.

 

“Um, sure,” Adam replied. He was bad at meeting new people, especially in contexts like this were there was pressure to be charming and likeable. 

 

“Where’s --” Ronan began. 

 

“Declan’s at the airport waiting for Matthew’s plane to come in. It got delayed,” Ashley said. “But while you're waiting, those potatoes aren’t going to peel themselves, and if you think I’m going to prep the entire Thanksgiving meal just because I’m a woman, you have another thing coming.”

 

“We didn’t fucking say that, Amy,” Ronan said. 

 

Ashley scowled and jabbed her finger in the direction of the counter. “Russet. Sweet. Get peeling.”

 

**Before**

 

_ “You think they’d fucking go easy on us with Thanksgiving coming up,” said Ronan. He was laying on Adam’s dorm room bed with a textbooks he had abandoned a while ago laid open across his chest.  _

 

_ “In two weeks,” Adam said, from a seat at his desk. He tucked a pen behind his ear. “And it’s just a long weekend anyway.”  _

 

_ Ronan rolled over on his side. The textbook slide off him and clattered to the floor. The sound made Adam cringe. He kept his textbooks pristine, ready to be sold back to the bookstore at the end of the semester.  _

 

_ “What’re you doing?” Ronan asked. “For break.” _

 

_ “I’m signed up to stay on campus,” Adam said. He flipped through a notebook, searching for the correct stretch of notes.  _

 

_ “Not going home?” _

 

_ Adam sucked in a breath. They hadn’t talked about this yet, having only met at the beginning of this academic year. The ‘where I come from’ talk was standard college conversation, but Adam avoided it as much as possible. He much preferred the where he was going topic.  _

 

_ But this was Ronan, and they were dating. Officially.  _

 

_ “I don’t… really have a home to go back to.” Adam bit his lip. He could hear Ronan’s conscious quietness. “I’m estranged from my parents. And it wasn’t nice place anyway.”  He tapped the end of his pen on the notebook. “So… that’s that.”  _

 

_ Not looking at him, Adam listened to Ronan being quiet, wondering if he was going to ask questions or was going to judge… _

 

_ “Come home with me,” Ronan said.  _

 

_ Adam turned to look. The side of Ronan’s face was smushed into the pillow in a way that was sort of adorable, too soft for his hard exterior. Adam stuttered out: “What?”  _

 

_ Ronan shrugged the shoulder not pressed into the mattress. “It’s not a big deal,” Ronan said, although Adam definitely disagreed. “It’s just me and my brothers. And my brother’s girlfriend. We kept up the tradition after my parents died for my little brother. This was his first year away at college.”  _

 

_ “I don’t want to intrude --”  _

 

_ “You won’t be,” Ronan interrupted.  _

 

_ Adam sucked a breath in through his nose. Well then, he was just going to have to say what he was thinking.  _

 

_ “Don’t you think it’s too soon in our…” Relationship was a strong word. “For you to take me home to meet the family?”  _

 

_ “Don’t think of it like that,” Ronan said.  _

 

_ “How am I supposed to think of it as?” _

 

_ “Think of it as… me opening my heart to fucking pathetic loser who has nowhere to go for Thanksgiving.”  _

 

_ Adam threw his pen at him. He bounced off his elbow, and Ronan roiled with laughter. “Hey, you could’ve put my eye out!”  _

 

_ Truly distracted now from his studying, Adam got from the desk and came to sit on the edge of the bed. “I’ll kiss and make it better,” he said.  _

 

_ “You corny fuck,” Ronan said, but wrapped his hand around the back of Adam’s neck as he leaned forward anyway. _

  
  


**Now**

 

Despite Ronan’s reassurances, sitting across the Lynch family at the dinner table wasn’t a casual meeting. To not impress the much-beloved Matthew would be like if the family dog rejected him. Not a make or break, but a harbinger. 

 

Declan was another hurdle. Adam had come in understanding that his and Ronan’s relationship was tumtulous but was under a truce for holidays, but Adam hadn’t been prepared for Declan in person. He was as intimidating as Ronan seemed at first glance, but in an entirely different way. Where Ronan looked like he would punch you in the face and key your car if you crossed him, Declan looked like he would hire a private investigator to find out all your dirty secrets and make passive aggressive remarks over a period of time to systematically erode your self-esteem. 

 

Adam might’ve been nervous. Worse, because it wasn’t even Thanksgiving day yet and Adam had the rest of the long weekend to forage through. And even worse than that because Ronan had gone quiet and cagey since they arrived here.  

 

“Man, I hate airports,” Declan said, leaning back in his chair, placed at the head of the table. All the proof Adam needed that the man as situating himself as the surrogate father of the family meet up. His comment sounded like an open offer for small talk, but Adam had never been on an airplane in his life. It was a fact that might’ve been useful during two truths and a lie icebreakers freshman year professors forced on them, but not so now. 

 

Thankfully, Matthew was so excited from his first half semester at college he talked enough for all them. And Ashley was a natural hostess even though the home wasn’t hers to host, filling in gaps of the conversation, throwing easy questions Adam’s way every so often about things like his hometown and his major and what he wanted to do with said majors. 

 

After a long drive, an afternoon of potato peeling, an evening of stilted conversation that Adam didn’t feel integrated in, and the stress of Ronan being so strange by his side, Adam was exhausted by the time people were turning into bed.  

 

So the Lynch family dispersed in different directions, and Adam and Ronan were finally left alone again. 

 

“I’ll get you some blankets and pillows for the couch,” Ronan said, not making eye contact, then turning away down some hallway. 

 

Adam was left blinking and befuddled behind him. They had shared a bed before, the two of them. A few times for midday naps, especially after making out. Once overnight when Adam had spent too long studying in Ronan’s room had been too tired to walk back across campus. And that had been at Ronan’s suggestion, because Adam hated imposing on people and been ready to slop himself across campus anyway. 

 

Ronan returned with an armful of blankets and pillows and dropped them onto the center of the couch. 

  
  


**Before**

 

_ “Is here good?” Adam asked, setting his tray down on one of the two-seater tables that lined the central row of the cafeteria. Date tables, they were casually called.  _

 

_ “It’s fine,” Ronan replied. His tray clattered down, and then him afterwards, into the chair.  _

 

_ The two of them had been hanging out for the last month, since meeting, disastrously in Adam’s case, at the beginning of the year party with Blue’s introduction. It had been mostly shared meals and study sessions with the lot of them: Blue, Gansey, Adam, and Ronan with the occasional interruptions of Henry Cheng huddled around a table together. They had caught a movie, just the two of them in the midst of a crowd, that the Film Club has organized to have projected on the outside of the Student Center a climate Friday night. Several times the two of them had been left lingering on their own after group gatherings. One time, Adam had gotten Ronan back into his dorm room, claiming his mouth with his own in a rare moment of privacy.  _

 

_ Both of them were busy, as students, with Adam doubly busy with his double majors, triply busy with his job on top of that. So when Ronan asked Adam to dinner, just the two of them, he agreed readily, even if it was just the cafeteria, nothing fancy. After all, his meal plan already covered it, so it was more economical than going out.  _

 

_ Of course, now Ronan was being cagey.  _

 

_ Adam stabbed a fork into his garden salad and lifted it up for inspection. The lettuce seemed rather limp. Ah, the joys of cafeteria food. He racked the salad off his fork against the rim of his plate to dislodge the lettuce and turned his attention to his pile of french fries inside. Can’t mess up fried potatoes too much.  _

 

_ Ronan -- gnawing on the leather bands around his wrist -- dropped his hand away from his mouth to say, “I need to talk to you about something.” _

 

_ “Okay,” Adam said neutrally. ‘I need to talk to you’ were dangerous words that could go in any direction.  _

 

_ “I like you,” Ronan said, plainly, with a solid amount of eye contact.  _

 

_ “Good,” Adam said. “I like you too.” But he still wasn’t sure where this conversation was going. Ronan’s follow up could be a ‘but’ and a relationship downgrade. Or it could be a conversation that lead to a relationship upgrade.  _

 

_ “There’s something you need to understand about me,” Ronan said. He shifted in his chair. “I have one friend.” _

 

_ “Gansey,” Adam stated.  _

 

_ “Yes. I have one friend and I’ve had him since high school. He’s like a brother to me. And I have two real brothers. Do you get what I’m saying?” _

 

_ “No,” Adam said. Unless Ronan was suggesting that Adam would always play second fiddle to his best friend, which was the weirdest part of ‘so where is this relationship going’ discussion he had ever been a part of.  _

 

_ “Fuck,” Ronan said, shoulders curling in. “This is all coming out like shit.” _

 

_ Adam didn’t think he was being dumped, even if they weren’t officially together, but he was still confused.  _

 

_ “What I’m trying to say is that… I don’t do casual. I don’t hook up, no strings attached, that kind of shit. It’s just who I am, as a person. I don’t know what you want out of all this, but that’s me…”  _

 

_ “Okay,” Adam said again, the neutral strained. He supposed it was now his job to interpret all of that. “Here’s what you need to know about me,” he said. “I don’t have time for people I don’t like. I’m a double major scholarship student with a job and a lot of ambitions. If all I was looking for was a no strings attached hookup, I would’ve given you up as a lost cause about three weeks ago.” _

 

_ “Okay,” Ronan said, stealing Adam’s word.  _

 

_ “Okay,” Adam repeated back.  _

 

_ “Do you want to make it…” Ronan taped on the table. “Official?” _

 

_ Just to be a jerk, Adam replied, “Facebook official?” _ __  
  


_ “I don’t have a facebook,” Ronan said. He peppered ‘fuck’ into his vocabulary like it was a common adjective. He said facebook like it was a ‘fuck’.  _

 

_ “I know,” Adam said with a wicked grin. “So, official. We’re dating.”  _

 

_ “Yes,” Ronan said.  _

 

_ “And we’re… exclusive,” Adam said.  _

 

_ “Yes.”  _

 

_ “Sounds good,” Adam said. “Now I just have to break up with my other boyfriends.” _

 

_ Ronan dropped his head. “Please stop making jokes.”  _

  
  


**Now**

 

It was Thanksgiving night, and the evening required a coat, and the air smelled like dense earth when Adam stepped outside onto the porch. Ronan couldn’t be found in any of corners of the house Adam knew to look, and when Declan noticed him looking, he had pointed over his shoulder at the back door in silent direction. 

 

He found Ronan sitting on a wooden bench, back against the outside wall. Ronan saw him and pressed a finger across his lips to warn silence. He then pointed out into the lawn. Adam squinted; Eyes adjusting to the dark, he saw the pair of deer, grazing, eating the bark off a stump. 

 

Adam crept over to the bench and sat beside Ronan. It creaked under his weight. The deer looked up -- frozen investigation -- then trotted off. 

 

“Oops,” Adam said. 

 

“It’s alright,” Ronan said. His breath puffed a little frost into the air. It was just that side of cold. 

 

Adam stuck his bare hands between his knees for warmth. “Do you even want me here?” he said. 

 

“I want you here,” Ronan said. 

 

“I couldn’t tell,” Adam said. “You haven’t talked to me in like twenty four hours.” Since they had separated the evening before. Even though they had shared the morning preparations, Thanksgiving meal, and dessert together. The whole production, even with only five of them, was full of clatter and conversation. Matthew, Ashley, and even Declan had all spoken with Adam; Ronan had spoken with Matthew, Ashley, and even Declan. 

 

“I know I’ve been fucking weird,” Ronan said. “I always think I’m ready to come back to this place, and them I’m here and…” He ran a hand over his face, and ended with his forehead resting in his palm. “My mom had long blonde hair,” he said. 

 

“Okay…”

 

“When we walked in on Ashley in the kitchen yesterday… for a fucking second, I thought she was back.”

 

“Oh, Ronan.” 

 

A cold breeze rustled around them. Ronan hunched up his shoulders against it. Adam removed one hand from between his legs to lay it on Ronan’s knee. 

 

Ronan cleared his throat. “After that… I knew I wasn’t going to sleep well last night. Sometimes… I have nightmares. Christ.” He ducked his head, shook it. “I wanted to pace out revealing all my fucking emotional damage.” 

 

Adam ran his thumb along the seam of Ronan’s jeans as his own words queued up in his head. He took a breath and said, “I grew up in a trailer park. We were dirt poor. We didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving. It was just a day off when football was on tv.” 

 

Ronan laid his hand on top of Adam’s, curling his fingers underneath.  

 

“My dad,” Adam continued, finding himself at the hard part, finding a dark spot out in front of him in the night to concentration on. “He was a mean drunk. Um. Abusive. My mom… she let him. My dad’s why I can’t…” With his free hand, he touched the shell of his deaf ear. He dropped it a second later. “There. We’re even with the emotional fucking damage.” 

 

Adam startled when he felt the wisp of Ronan’s breath, then his lips, against the flesh of his bad ear.   

 

He turned to Ronan. 

 

“Your family didn’t deserve you,” Ronan said. 

 

Adam held his breath somewhere in his throat. No had ever put it in exactly those terms for him before. Of the few he had admitted the truth of his upbringing to, he received sympathy and his parents condemnation. He was told that parents weren’t supposed to behave like that, and that Adam hadn’t deserved  _ it.  _ No one thought to say Adam had deserved more.

 

The back door cracked open. Matthew stuck his head out. “Hey, you want to play Monopoly? God, it’s cold out here!” 

 

“We’ll be in in a minute,” Ronan called back over Adam’s shoulder. 

 

The back door clattered shut. 

 

Ronan’s fingers were as cold as outside when he touched the line of Adam’s jaw, a tiny guide in the right direction. The first touch of their mouths was testing, just lips. Adam finally let go of that breath. Then his mouth was busied completely with Ronan’s. 

 

After what was more than the promise minute, Ronan rested his forehead against Adam’s. It didn’t feel so cold outside anymore. 

 

“We better go in,” Ronan said. “Or Matthew’s going to come out and see something that’s going to scar him for life. 

 

Adam snorted. “Alright.” 

 

#

 

Later than night, the five of them sat around a game of Monopoly, which within a hour and a half Adam was winning due to his dire ruthlessness. 

 

“For once in my life I’m rich,” Adam said, as he collected the last of Declan’s store of fake money after he had landed on Adam’s hoteled-up Pennsylvania Avenue. 

 

Ronan, who was currently hanging on by a thread, funds-wise, and only by being stuck in the jail for three turns, said, “I just get to be rich every other day.” 

 

Adam dug his elbow into Ronan’s side in revenge. 

 

Ashley patted Declan’s shoulder as he declared bankruptcy. “I’m going to have to break up with you now if you don’t have the money to keep up with my lifestyle.” 

 

And a half an hour past that, Adam was the undisputed winner, a master of board game capitalism, and Matthew had fallen asleep back asleep on his corner of the couch probably because of an overdose of turkey from earlier.  

 

“After all this time, I still don’t know how you to met,” Ashley said as Declan passed her a glass of wine. “Obviously, you two go to the same school.”

 

“Adam?” Declan said, holding up the bottle of wine in offering. 

 

Adam shook his head. “No, thank you.” 

 

“Ronan?” Declan asked next. 

 

“Don’t even fucking joke about me drinking wine,” Ronan said, which was also a no. 

 

“I’m still waiting for my story,” Ashley said. 

 

When a few seconds wait made it clear that Ronan wasn’t going to pipe up, Adam took charge. “Well, my friend and Ronan’s friend Gansey -- ” They knew Gansey. “Those two had started dating, and I guess it got in their minds to set us up… And the first time we met, I got drunk and...” Adam looked over at Ronan, fondly. He had the profile of a Roman emperor and it was distinctly unfair in Adam’s opinion. Despite a number of people, including Ronan, who protested it, Adam felt distinctly plain in appearance.

 

“He, um, walked me back to my dorm. Was a complete gentleman about it. Y’know, whole knight in shining armor deal.” 

 

Ronan’s head jerked in Adam’s direction, their eyes meeting. His thick eyebrows were dipped -- a question. He must not of been used to being referred to in such terms. In the way he presented himself and the wisps of tails Adam had heard from his teenage rebellion years made it clear how people thought of him: bad boy, delinquent, troubled youth. But Adam had lived through him.

 

Ashley aww-ed. 

 

Declan said, “I would’ve thought it would be the other way around.” 

 

Ronan said, “Don’t be an asshole,” but he didn’t remove his cool blue eyes from their lock with Adam’s. 

 

“No,” Adam said, all eye contact. “He’s a really good guy.”

 

#

 

When bedtime closed upon then, Ronan slipped his hand into Adam’s and lead him upstairs to his bedroom. 

 

“It’s my childhood bed, so we’ll have to squeeze,” Ronan said with a little chagrin. With the moon glow through the open window curtains, he didn’t need to turn on the light, so he didn’t. 

 

Adam kicked off his shoes. “It’s not like dorm beds are all that big.”

 

The changed and then arranged themselves on the bed, comfortably close and cozy in a way that made up for the distance of the night before. 

 

“I would apologize for the awkward Thanksgiving dinner,” Ronan said. “But awkward is a fucking traditional Thanksgiving side dish.” 

 

Adam snorted, and tucked his nose into Ronan’s shoulder. He was stripped down to just a t-shirt, and even through that the heat of him was like a brand. He wondered if some people just ran hot; people were always commenting on how cold Adam’s fingers were to the touch. 

 

“Do you regret coming?” Ronan said. “Really?” They still had three more days. 

 

“If I wasn’t here, I’d be halfway through my torts paper,” Adam said. “So, thanks for rescuing me from that.” 

 

“Fucking nerd.” 

One of Ronan’s broad hands ran up Adam’s back. Now that they were here in bed, comfortable and snug, Adam didn’t want to sleep. He wanted to dwell in these sensations for a long time. 

 

“I don’t regret it,” Adam said. The trip might’ve had its lumps already, but they had come out of it with a surer built understanding of each other. 

 

“Good.” The puff of Ronan’s breath across his ear made him shiver and Ronan pulled him closer as if on instinct. “You can’t leave now. Declan already thinks you’re too good for me.” 

 

“No, he doesn’t,” Adam said. Sure, it felt as if Declan had went from coolly assessing him to accepting his existence, but none of that racked up as approval. 

 

“You fucking kidding me? Did you see his face when you said you were a double major. He almost jizzed.” 

 

Adam choke-laughed. “Stop. Stop with this line of thought right now. Now I’m never going to get to sleep.” 

 

“Hmm…” Ronan said. The hand that had wandered up his back now caressed lower. “I wonder what we can do with that.”  

  
  


**Before**

 

_ The beginning of the academic year was no breeze for a double major, lest of all the hefty double major responsibilities of engineering and pre-law. It didn’t help that Adam wasn’t satisfied with anything less than the best. Not his own personal best. The best, period. Like a shiny, golden trophy.  _

 

_ Thus this making it the fifth hour straight he had in the school library today. It was the best place to study when you had a roommate that both day napped and snored, and the rest of the student population was playing way too much frisbee and beer pong to commemorate their return to campus.  _

 

_ Hunched over at his favorite table, a little round thing on the second floor that overlooked the front door, Adam jumped at hand touching his shoulder, at the sudden presence looming behind him. Some instincts you didn’t outgrow.  _

 

_ He turned to see no other than Ronan, looking shocked at his shock.  _

 

_ “Christ, you scared me,” Adam said, taking in a big breath to try to calm his overalert senses.  _

 

_ Ronan stuffed his hands in his jeans pockets. “I said hey.” _

 

_ This wasn’t too unusual for Adam to not put it together. Ronan had come up behind him on the right. Adam touched his earlobe. “I can’t hear out of this ear.”  _

 

_ “Huh.”  _

 

_ Don’t ask, don’t ask, don’t ask, Adam pleaded mentally. He didn’t want to dig into the truth of it right now, nor cover it up with a half-truth.  _

 

_ “They sent me to come and find you,” Ronan said, the they being Gansey and Blue. There was a recently restored drive-in movie theater that apparently they ‘just had to go to’, and that was the plan for tonight. “They’re waiting in the car.”   _

 

_ And despite the fact that Blue knew Adam’s favorite library haunts and Ronan didn’t, but Ronan was the one sent inside… It was telling.  _

 

_ “And they sent you,” Adam commented.  _

 

_ Ronan shrugged. “It’s fucking obvious what they’re trying to do.” _

 

_ Adam got up from his chair and it put him right into Ronan’s space. Payback. “Well…” He swung his backpack onto his shoulder. “It’s working, isn’t it?”  _

 

_ Ronan’s face remained stoic, but Adam caught the bob of his adam’s apple.  _

 

_ “They’re waiting,” Adam said, as he brushed past, and didn’t let his smug smile emerge until Ronan’s couldn’t see it. _

 

_ Later, in the backseat of Gansey’s camaro, as Casablanca played out on a screen before them, Adam laid his hand out on the bench seat in a convenient place for Ronan -- his backseat partner -- to find. When Ronan did take the bait, he didn’t just hold Adam’s hand like one would, but rather played it. He traced the lines of Adam’s palm like they were a map to be memorized, petted down his knuckles and each finger individually.  _

 

_ Turning his attention away from Rick and Isla’s drama on the big screen, he found Ronan examining his hand with his eyes with the same intensity as his touch, like he was an alien who had never seen a functioning human hand before. Or like he was a human who had never found a hand he had wanted to hold so much and was fascinated by every intimate intracancy of it. Adam didn’t know what to do with that second thought.  _

 

_ Ronan lifted his eyes, catching Adam looking at him. Adam flushed. The hand fondling hadn’t broke him, but this did. Ronan leaned in, and whispered in Adam’s good ear an echo from a conversation over an hour past: “Yeah. It’s working.”  _


End file.
